Guys there is no way that Orbis are selling and if you read on, you will note that they are not "trading" CER. It is very much a long term investment and I dont believe their repuation is tarnished at all.
For those who want to have a read of the full report, give me your email address and I'll forward it to you.
As at 30/09/08, 2% of their fund was invested in CER. It may be more than that now as further change in substantial holding announcements have been made.
Below is the response I recently received from Orbis:
Dear xxxx
Thank you for your email.
Due to confidentiality reasons, we do not ordinarily provide information regarding our specific analysis on certain stocks. In addition, we are also prohibited from providing personal financial product advice under our Australian Financial Services Licence and accordingly, cannot comment on your analysis.
Attached is our September 2008 Quarterly Report which you may find interesting reading.
Kind regards
Orbis Client Service team – Sydney
Below is a snippet from the quarterly report:
There are a number of similar examples which your Fund owns – ALE (which we discussed earlier in the year), Thakral, Australand and ING Real Estate Entertainment Fund. Centro Retail Trust, while having more risk, offers exceptional value trading at less than 10% of its net asset value (after a hefty write down by new management) and less than one year’s earnings. While many investors have been selling, we have been buying and property share holdings now account for almost 20% of the Fund. We are confident that these shares will one day provide good capital returns, but while we wait the stocks are yielding sustainable distributions of more than 10% per annum.
CER Price at posting:
6.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held